


It's just a common view

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, this is so dumb, this is so gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 20:32:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2481470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel just wants to study, but someone is snoring in the library and it's obviously her job to do something about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's just a common view

**Author's Note:**

> Very distantly inspired by the AU from [this post](http://deliverusfromsburb.tumblr.com/post/98395987533/i-understand-that-a-lot-of-people-enjoy-writing), "it’s 3 am and I’m still in the library studying for finals and I’m losing my grip on reality and I think I just saw a ghost." Distantly.
> 
> Featuring appearances from:  
> Sarah "constantly having to use sex to get what I want" Manning  
> Rachel "Jason Compson is not a terrible person" Duncan  
> Jason "a terrible person" Compson

Rachel has been in the library for an amount of hours that quite frankly horrifies her – she’d taken off her watch when the occasional glance had rendered her nauseous and despairing at her own work ethic, but she knows it’s been long enough to watch the light change, fade, and make a tentative attempt at returning. The angry red mark on her wrist has faded, by now, and she realizes with a mind made foggy by caffeine and small print that she doesn’t actually know where her watch _is_.

That’s slightly disturbing.

More disturbing is this: Rachel is on the top floor of the library. This has been designated the “quiet zone” by an annoyingly chipper troop of upperclassmen and thus should be so silent that Rachel could hear the ticking of her watch (wherever it actually is). Instead, she can hear the sanity-shredding noise of a chainsaw revving over, and over, and over.

Someone has fallen asleep in the library. Someone is _snoring_ in the library. Swallowing down the incoherent scream of rage that’s building in her throat, Rachel slams her hands on the table (sending her sheaf of notes rustling) and stands up in a pointed, angry motion.

Then she heads into the stacks with the singular purpose of a heat-seeking missile, anger radiating from her with such heat that several of the books on the edge of the shelves consider crisping, a little bit. She follows the snoring through several neatly-labeled rows, deeper into the labyrinth, and is just beginning to wonder if she’ll ever find her way _out_ again when she stumbles on the snoring’s source.

She desperately wants to think a German curse word, but German 22 isn’t generous with the scathing wit; instead Rachel just thinks _blöd_ as viciously as possible and hopes that it does the trick.

Sarah Manning is lying sprawled in the middle of the floor like the library is her private – private sleeping area. _Blöd, blöd, blöd._

Of all the people, too! Rachel could tolerate nearly anyone – no, that’s a lie. This is absolutely disgraceful no matter _whose_ body is taking up the middle of an aisle. It is just especially, especially irksome that it’s Sarah Manning. Sarah Manning, who slouches into every lecture fifteen minutes late, disheveled and angry. Sarah Manning, who always takes the empty seat next to Rachel in the front row – because there is always an empty seat next to Rachel; she’d worked very hard to get it, with pointed acts of passive-aggressiveness and hatred, and to see it gone to _Sarah Manning_ …Sarah Manning! Who _doodles_ in the margins of her notebook, and whose elbow has jabbed Rachel in the ribs no less than five times in the last two weeks alone. If she continues at this rate, Rachel might get something less than an A in her literature class, and that is absolutely unacceptable.

And here Sarah is, asleep. Rachel gives a withering look to the copy of _The Sound and the Fury_ Sarah’s using as a pillow, as if to chastise it for failing at its duty.

With a prolonged and heartfelt sigh, she turns from the _crime scene_ on the floor and trails fingers along the edge of the shelf until she finds a particularly heavy volume. She lifts it. Holds it in her hands to test its weight.

Then she unceremoniously drops it on the floor.

There’s a sound like a cannon going off and Sarah wakes up in an explosion of limbs and a noise that is something like “huh- _bwuh!_ ” Rachel watches this with the patience and disdain it deserves, and is only a _little_ bit vindictively satisfied.

“Good _morning_ , Sarah,” she says, pleased to notice that her voice isn’t at all rusty from several hours of silence. “So glad you could join us.”

Sarah just blinks at her, and groans, and throws an arm over her face. “You’re the girl from my lit class, right,” she croaks, and shifts her arm up slightly so she can eye Rachel, “the one who’s,” she waves a hand vaguely from her position on the floor, “always in the front row.”

Then she pauses, and adds, sourly, “Did you have to drop a bloody _book_.”

Rachel takes a second to be stung by the fact that Sarah doesn’t even know her _name_ , then allows a few additional seconds to remind herself that the opinions of idiots like Sarah Manning don’t matter and really it’s Sarah’s fault for not looking at the roster _ever_.

“You were snoring,” she says coldly.

Sarah groans, louder (and Rachel angrily shuts down the urge to twitch) (this is a _library_ ), and shoves the heels of her hands into her eyes, likely ruining her already-smudged eyeliner. “Do you know what time it is,” she says, and Rachel says “I don’t.”

Then she pauses, lets out a sharp breath through her nose, and grudgingly adds, “The sun is going to rise soon.”

That sets Sarah scrambling up so she’s standing, one hand latched protectively around Faulkner’s masterpiece and the other darting up in a sad attempt at salvaging her hair. “Shite,” she breathes, despairing. “Really?”

“Yes,” Rachel says, eyelashes fluttering with no attempt at sincerity. She waits a beat and then adds, while looking Sarah up and down appraisingly, “If it helps, you look _very_ well-rested.”

(She doesn’t.)

Sarah’s just standing there in the middle of the aisle, eyeing Rachel like Rachel is holding Sarah’s puppy over the edge of a cliff – desperation, hope, and a deep despair at the inevitable. “Look,” she says, “do _you_ understand this shit.”

“Yes, of course,” Rachel says loftily, with perhaps more reassurance in her own intelligence than is warranted, “and so would you if you read the book instead of hoping to absorb its knowledge through osmosis.”

“Hey,” Sarah snaps, “it was just a _question_ , okay?” It’s only when her voice echoes off the ceiling that she winces; her fingers return to her hair again, ruffling it, and she sighs through her teeth.

“Look,” she says, “I just—”

She visibly wilts, and Rachel realizes with a sudden horror that Sarah is going to start talking about her feelings. She should have just put up with the snoring; that would have been preferable.

“I’ve been tryin’ to read this bloody book for _hours_ ,” Sarah says, looking at Rachel like Rachel may possibly save the puppy after all, if Sarah _believes_. “Benjy’s mental, Quentin makes no bloody sense, Jason’s a twat—”

“Jason is pragmatic,” Rachel snaps.

“Jason stole his sister’s bloody _kid_ ,” Sarah barks, and then closes her eyes tightly, says, “Sorry, sorry. Not the point. Obviously I don’t get the book.” The last words are practically _dripping_ with sarcasm, but Rachel appreciates the token effort to appease her anyways.

“Can you help,” Sarah says, voice strangled and bitter and generally as unenthusiastic about the idea as Rachel is.

Rachel considers the idea.

“No,” she says decisively, and turns to walk away.

“Wait, seriously?” Sarah squawks – in a whisper, thankfully – behind Rachel, and then she _grabs Rachel’s wrist and spins her around_. Why this is happening to Rachel she does not know. She hopes the way she’s looking at Sarah conveys her disdain.

“What’s your _problem,_ front-row,” Sarah hisses, and Rachel hisses back “It’s Rachel Duncan, and my _problem_ is that I would need an _astoundingly_ good reason to want to help you. I hope you fail out of the class. You obviously don’t—”

Rachel’s interrupted partway through her library-volume rant by the pressure of Sarah’s mouth against hers.

(In retrospect, she probably should have seen this coming; when she’d started whisper-yelling at Sarah Sarah’s eyes had gone dead and resigned and she’d muttered something like “A reason, right” before…well.)

(But Rachel was busy building up an incredibly satisfying head of steam, and Sarah’s past issues with “reasons” are _not her concern_.)

It’s not even a good kiss. Sarah’s lips are cracked and dry and her mouth is stale and disgusting from sleeping on the library floor. There is absolutely _no_ reason why Rachel should want to reel Sarah in by the belt loops on her ridiculous leather pants and deepen the kiss. None at all.

The fact that she _does_ , therefore, is horrifying enough to make her push Sarah away and stumble a few steps back into the hallway, hissing, “What is _wrong_ with you, Sarah Manning” in a tone of loathing and disgust.

Sarah’s looking about as shell-shocked as Rachel feels and she says, “Wait, is that seriously not what you—”

“ _No_ ,” Rachel shrieks, “why would I possibly want to kiss you?” She conveniently ignores the surprisingly persuasive list of reasons her body is giving her as to why she would possibly want to kiss Sarah Manning, and focuses instead on her righteous disdain.

It helps.

“Oh, shit,” Sarah says, backing up, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”

“ _Stop_ talking,” Rachel says, bringing a hand to the bridge of her nose to knead at what is promising to be an unholy terror of a caffeine headache. Maybe she’ll name it Sarah. She’s obviously busy considering this idea, and somehow the words “I’ll help you with the book after class” fall out of her lips without her noticing.

Sarah blinks, presumably incredibly confused with Rachel’s whiplash.

To be fair: _Rachel_ is also confused with Rachel’s whiplash. She’s starting to come to the slow, terrible realization that she may actually care about Sarah Manning’s grade in her literature class, due to a few minutes of bickering in a library aisle and one _completely terrible_ kiss. This is why Rachel studies on the top floor: obviously her ability to have sane, rational interactions with people vanishes after her fifth hour of studying.

“You’ve made enough of an idiot of yourself already,” she says, and to her the words are practically flashing in obvious neon THIS IS A COVER-UP but hopefully Sarah is as stupid as Rachel’s previous evidence has led her to believe. “I’m curious to see how much farther you can sink.” Then she twitches her lips upwards in a completely insincere smile and heads back out of the aisle before either of them somehow manage to make bigger idiots of themselves (or before Sarah can say anything in response, but that is obviously completely besides the point). She’ll consider the consequences of this later, after she’s slept. For now she’s going to resume her note-taking and not think about the pressure of Sarah’s lips on hers, or the fact that she’s shackled herself to Sarah Manning through at least the conclusion of the book.

And she does a perfectly fine job of it, too, until she gets back to her library table, sits down, and realizes what she’s done.

Then Rachel’s head hits the table and she groans.

**Author's Note:**

> It's hard to compromise  
> When I see through your eyes  
> It's just a common view  
> I guess it's lost on you  
> \--"I Can Talk," Two Door Cinema Club
> 
> Unofficial title: "No sound and plenty of fury" because they're talking about The Sound and the Fury but it's in a _library_ oh my god save me from myself.


End file.
